10 Top Reasons to List Your Therapy Practice in a Directory

As one of the leading online directories for therapists and mental health professionals, GoodTherapy.org is often asked: Why should I list my therapy practice in a directory?

The simple answer to this question can be delivered in two parts. First, you want to help people, which is likely what compelled you to work in mental health care in the first place. The second factor is the sheer magnitude of the internet, which requires you to be strategic if you want to stand out among the many distractions competing for people’s attention online.

To put the internet’s size into perspective, Google, the reigning search engine giant, estimates its index contains 100 million gigabytes of data, web pages, and websites. By comparison, the Library of Congress, which is the largest library in the world, estimated in 2012 that if their entire collection was digitized, it would take about 3 million gigabytes of storage. Even if you have a beautiful website for your practice, there’s no guarantee people will find it among all that competition.

Early web entrepreneurs, including our own CEO, Noah Rubinstein, LMFT, LMHC, developed ways to help people solve the problem of standing out in a sea of searches. One of those tools is the online business directory, and here are our top 10 reasons why you should list your therapy practice in one:

Make yourself more accessible to those who need your services: Put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for what you offer professionally. If someone needed to find your office hours, how easy would they be to find? Can they find your hours in the phone book? What about online? Considering that more than 100 billion searches are made on Google each month for information like office hours, there is a huge potential return in making yourself more accessible online. Listing your therapy practice in a reputable online business directory helps make your information easier for a larger audience to find.

Share a more complete story of your practice and services:Most online directories allow members to create robust profiles that feature the best parts of their business story. If you’re looking for a great marketing tool that allows you to tell people seeking therapy what you do and why you’re passionate about it, a directory can be a great place to share the details. Highlight all the things that make you unique among your competition.

Build brand trust: Brand trust can be that tiny, intangible force that tips someone off the fence they’re sitting on before making a decision. Brand trust can make all the difference between a visitor and a “conversion” in the few seconds when you have someone’s attention online. Listing your therapy practice in a reputable online directory may boost your perceived brand trust, in addition to getting your brand in front of more people by leveraging the directory’s traffic.

SEO value: Search engines gather information about websites and businesses by sending programs commonly called spiders, bots, or crawlers all over the web. This helps search engines understand where they should put your website in their list of search results. Making your information easy for search engines to find and understand is called “search engine optimization,” or SEO for short. You may be able to make it easier for the crawlers to connect the dots with a listing in a prominent directory that has all your practice information readily available. Additionally, most online directories (including GoodTherapy.org) allow you to link to your website on your profile, which is a positive search engine ranking signal when the link comes from a reputable website.

Kick your online presence up a notch: The goal of online marketing should be to increase your web presence so it’s easier for people seeking your services—and search engines seeking information about you—to find it. At a relatively low cost in both dollars and time, you can create a profile on multiple directories that rank high in search engine results. Simply put, piggyback on successful directories to generate more new leads for your practice.

A viable alternative to a website: Although many online marketers recommend having a website if you intend to market your services online, a website can be a costly investment. Building and marketing a website takes a substantial amount of expertise, and the site must be updated at least every few years to keep up with digital trends. In some cases, such as when a therapist is retiring in a few years, it may not make good business sense to invest thousands of dollars into a website and online marketing. In such cases, maintaining profiles on a directory or two may be all you need to keep generating new clients for your practice.

Increase targeted traffic to your website: Your website might get thousands of visits every month, but if your visitors aren’t in search of your services, those thousands of visits may not be very valuable to you. Listing your practice in a directory that ranks highly in search results is a great way to steer targeted, and ultimately more valuable, traffic to your website.

A cost-effective marketing investment: Savvy business owners are all about ROI, or return on investment, when it comes to spending marketing dollars. As the old adage goes, “You have to spend money to make money,” but you definitely don’t have to go broke trying to make money. Breaking it down into simple dollars and cents, listing your practice in a prominent online directory can produce great ROI. What’s the average revenue you expect your practice will make from a single person who comes to you for therapy? It’s probably close to what you’d expect to spend for an entire year of membership in the most visible directories for therapists, which makes a directory listing a smart choice to include in your annual marketing budget.

Utilize directory resources: Many online directories offer more than just the tools to create a profile or listing. Some provide publication opportunities, partnerships, additional advertising channels, and continuing education events for professionals. If you’re shopping around and deciding which directory you’d like to list your practice in, be sure to research what additional resources and opportunities are offered by each directory.

Get to the top of the search results: Online directories invest significant time and effort into getting to the top of search engine results for the best keywords and phrases people use to find your services. Most business owners aren’t SEO experts, but they can take advantage of business directories where there are SEO experts work hard to reach the top of the search results.

GoodTherapy.org Offers Specialized Services to Help Therapists Get Noticed Online

GoodTherapy.org receives tens of thousands of unique visitors every day and more than 1.6 million page views each month. We rank as a top search result for many therapy-related keywords and location-based searches. People seeking therapy trust GoodTherapy.org because of our dedication to ethical psychotherapy, our strict membership requirements, and our commitment to our mission and vision. We send thousands of emails, calls, and clicks every day from potential clients to the therapists listed in the GoodTherapy.org directory.

GoodTherapy.org offers marketing resources for therapists and can offer tailored suggestions for improving profile performance. GoodTherapy.org members can access free online web conferences that provide valuable information on how to grow your practice. Our team also works individually with members who want to optimize their profile listing by reviewing profile content and providing specific feedback and guidance.

GoodTherapy.org's publication and media opportunities provide therapists with additional online exposure. Members of GoodTherapy.org can submit articles for review or apply to become a Topic Expert. A single article published on The Good Therapy Blog can be read, liked, and shared thousands of times. GoodTherapy.org authors receive a high level of exposure and position themselves as authorities in the mental health field. Members can also take advantage of our media relations service, which connects therapists with journalists and other members of the media who are seeking subject matter experts.

Members of GoodTherapy.org benefit from our active social media platforms. GoodTherapy.org has more than 300,000 followers on various social media platforms, including a large audience on Facebook. Social media drives potential clients to the GoodTherapy.org therapist directory and provides a platform for mental health professionals to network and engage with the public.

The GoodTherapy.org Verified Credentials Seal for members boosts website performance. GoodTherapy.org members with verified credentials are eligible to add a Verified Credentials Seal to their personal websites. This seal associates you with our trusted brand and communicates your support for our mission. It also helps improve your profile's ranking in search engines—thus gaining more visibility and potentially earning more referrals.

Good advertising for your practice is no replacement for providing good therapy. If you provide quality treatment to the people who seek your help, having a steady referral base from the web can fuel a thriving practice and allow you to connect with others in search of treatment. Whether you are new to the world of online marketing or looking to expand your existing marketing efforts, GoodTherapy.org can help. Join us today!

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